Kirsten gets Arthur’s support on Kumble comments

New Delhi, Sep 16 (IANS) South African coach Mickey Arthur took a dig at the Indian media for misconstruing Gary Kirsten’s remarks over Anil Kumble. Arthur said Kirsten’s remarks were made keeping in mind the future of Indian cricket and not with the intention to criticise Kumble’s captaincy.Indian coach Kirsten recently tipped one-day captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni to take the reins of the Test side following which Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) issued gag orders for the South African.

“Anil Kumble is 38, for goodness sake. He has back-to-back series against Australia and England coming up. How long do people expect him to carry on? All Gary was doing was attempting to reassure Indians that Dhoni was qualified and ready to take over. And yet the media managed to twist his words into an attack on Kumble,” Arthur wrote in his column in cricketnirvana.com.

“I was pretty shocked to see what fuss the Indian media made about a recent comment from Gary Kirsten. All he said, from what I read, was that M.S. Dhoni was ready for the Test captaincy and that he would do a good job.”

Arthur went on to add there is a great amount of respect between Kirsten and Kumble.

“The relationship between captain and coach is critical to the success of any international team and I have personal experience of how much respect there is between Gary and Anil. If any cricket writer deliberately twisted Gary’s words in order to create a scandal, then shame on them.”

“Hopefully it won’t detract, in any way, from Team India’s performance against Australia. It is a series I will be watching extremely closely as we take on Australia in December. Good Luck India. And if Anil does retire afterwards, along with, perhaps, one or two other senior players, then I hope they have good reason to celebrate,” Arthur said.